Nazma muller talks to Carlos Moore.
Carlos Moore was born in Cuba in 1942, the son of Jamaican immigrants. As a child, he was called pichón, which means offspring of a corbeau. With the Revolution, he and most blacks assumed that, as Fidel Castro had promised, racism would end. At that time, 35 per cent of the people were black. With the exodus of 20 per cent of the white population to the United States, non-whites became the majority.
Moore was one of many black Cubans who protested against continued discrimination in the early days of the Revolution, and was jailed or sent to labour camps. He fled Cuba in 1963.
During more than 30 years of exile, Moore specialised in African, Latin-American and Caribbean affairs. He was a senior lecturer at the Institute of International Relations of UWI in St Augustine for six years. He was in Trinidad last week to launch his new book, Pichón: Race and Revolution in Castro’s Cuba.
He’s heard that I’m a Fidelista and has come to the interview armed with a book, Desafiós de la Problemática Racial en Cuba (Challenges to Racial Problems in Cuba).
I don’t get a chance to ask a question because he’s off and running as soon as we sit down...
CM: Raul Castro is trying to undercut Fidel. It’s a big power struggle right now. Raul’s sending a powerful message to the black population that he’s going to undo what Fidel did in terms of race. In his last book (100 Hours with Fidel) with [Ignacio] Ramonet, Ramonet told him, ’You know, this race thing...’ And Fidel says, ’Well, you know, we thought we had solved it. It’s behaviour, it’s discrimination and it has nothing to do with the State.’ But Raul is saying, ’No, this is not true. This is structural. The discrimination is structural. So this book [Desafiós de la Problemática Racial en Cuba] is a bomb.
NM: Why would Raul allow this book [Desafiós] to be released?
CM: They brought it out under the foundation that is bringing out a lot of studies about race. It’s good because it’s full of statistics. Seventy-six per cent of the people are black. If you cannot deal with that, you cannot deal with the real Cuba. Access to power, Page 248: ’the access to institutional power by blacks and mestizos is impaired because of a wide array of factors, among which is racial discrimination’. They’re no longer talking about people on the streets; it’s structural. Which means that everything that Fidel Castro has been saying is a lie. So this book is saying that racism has been growing and it’s now a threat to the stability of the country. If, in the next five years, you don’t have an explosion in Cuba, I would be the first one to be surprised.
NM: But, but, why then does Cuba offer scholarships to Caribbean students?
CM: Because Cuba has a policy on the Caribbean-I’ve studied the papers on this policy. I’ve even reported on Fidel Castro’s speeches. He said ’that so-called Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, which is nothing but a former colony of the British and is now a colony of the Americans, and will always be a colony’. I quoted things like that because Castro does these things. They have this absolutely arrogant attitude and this is why they can do this [indicating a letter of protest about Moore which the Cuban ambassador sent to the Barbados Nation after he spoke at UWI in Cave Hill]. They would never dare do this in Brazil, threaten the newspapers and call the university. I am on TV and radio in Brazil all the time. When Raul Castro was in Brazil, that is when they published my open letter to him.
NM: Why is this discrimination happening?
CM: The Revolution started out doing things. The first ten years were spent opening up access to everything. When Castro took power in 1959, 35 per cent of the population was black. He was brought to power by the white elite. They loved him. They used to call him La Gran Esperanza Blanca-the great white hope. Because Batista was darker than you.
NM: You’re kidding.
CM: Batista used to straighten his hair. He came to power through a coup d’etat. He imposed himself on the people.
NM: Batista’s race is never mentioned in any book.
CM: Because if you bring up Batista you have to explain the struggle that happened. The white elite said, We do not want a black monkey as president. Somebody has to overthrow him. And Castro said, I will. This is the part of history that people don’t know. Batista was a tyrant, he was in the hands of the mafia, in the hands of the US, but that’s not why the whites were against him-they too were pro-American. They did not want a black man as head of state. Did you know he was the only head of state who could not go into the white restaurants? He was banned from the white beaches and the white clubs in Cuba.
NM: So why didn’t he de-segregate everything? He was president.
CM: Because Batista never had the cojones to do a de-segregation-he knew the whites would turn against him and overthrow him. And they did it anyway. So he was constantly bribing parts of the white elite. There was so much racism in the 1950s. Batista had support among some of the black population. In Castro’s first statement after the Revolution, he says he was fighting to bring power back to the rightful race.
NM: But the music of Cuba is black. Santería [a Yoruba-based faith that is often compared to voodoo or obeah] is so powerful. Even white Cubans are Santeros!
CM: Do you know it was banned for 30 years? It went underground. Castro destroyed the black clubs. The black civil movement was destroyed by Castro.
NM: For someone who has been in awe of Fidel Castro for half her life, this is difficult to accept. What you’re saying points to a huge gaping hole in his intellect. How could he have fought for social justice and be a racist? What you’re saying means that this racism is something that is part of his being, something he learnt from small. He could not, intellectually, get over it.
CM: He could not get over it. And you must understand what happened. Castro was brought into power by his class. He was groomed from day one. He went to Jesuit schools, Spanish schools. He had no relationship with blacks at all. From when he was a child to when he was in university, Castro didn’t know the black population.
NM: So what would your advice to Mr Obama be on the Cuban situation?
CM: Lift the embargo. Get out of Guantanamo. Give it back to the Cubans. Listen-you have no idea how happy the blacks in Cuba were when Obama was elected. All across the island they were celebrating. There were signs all over the place: ’Si podemos...’ (Yes we can...).
NM: Are you saying there is a counter-revolution being started-a real revolution?
CM: That is what I’m saying. The [Cuban] Revolution died in its first ten years. That’s what people are not seeing. It’s like when [Soviet Union president Nikita] Khrushchev said, ’I have something to announce to the Communist world. Stalin killed close to 15 million people.’ People cried, people fainted. They didn’t know what to do. This is what is happening today.
NM: But the blacks in Cuba are educated. In Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, people are duped and exploited by politicians because they are not educated. This is not the case in Cuba.
CM: Listen-Cuba is the most policed state in the world. There are police everywhere. The people live in fear. It is not a matter of putting you in jail; it’s a matter of executing you. If you try to leave Cuba, they execute you. Why do you think so many people risk their lives trying to run away? Right now you have black people living in caves in Cuba because there’s no housing. You don’t have whites living in caves. The police system in Cuba is so strong. Cuba is a powerful country like Israel. The Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is comparable to that in Cuba.
NM: Why haven’t we seen a military coup by the army if it’s 85 per cent black?
CM: It’s not that easy. This thing about every Cuban being armed is a myth. The army has say, 95,000 men, led by generals. Of the 138 generals, only 35 are black and they are not division commanders. How can you mount a coup in that situation? I’ll tell you how. Raul Castro is in charge of the army, don’t forget that. Fidel’s pre-occupation has always been the Party. What Raul is doing is replacing Fidel’s men in the Party with his own men, who are all military. Raul knows where the danger comes from. You know what the danger is in Cuba and where the coup can come? Exactly how Batista did it in 1933. Something happens, like the Maleconazo, in 1994 when thousands of blacks poured into the streets of Havana. They broke up the place, burned cars, looted. Castro told the police to retreat immediately. No shooting. If they had shot a single black, that would have been it.
Castro spoke on TV, asked them to calm down. He said he would come and solve their problems. Only Castro can do that in Cuba. Talk, and have the people calm down. Raul can’t do that. So if that explosion takes place anywhere in Cuba-if that had happened in Oriente, the whole place would have gone up. But it happened in Havana where he could contain it.
That’s Raul’s nightmare. If there’s a Maleconazo 2, he has to take this army, whose ground troops are 80 to 85 per cent black. He’s going to have to use it for the first time inside of Cuba. Never has the army been used inside Cuba-they have always fought abroad. Raul is doing things to distance himself from the explosion that is coming. This is his last chance to convince the population that he is their hope for change.
Sixty-six per cent of blacks are unemployed. Imagine, you fight in Angola and come back home and you’re unemployed. When that situation goes off, there’s going to be bloodshed. And Obama knows it. He’s afraid of something happening in Cuba because he knows that means two to three million refugees fleeing to America. Jamaica will be pulverised within the first three weeks because no fewer than 200,000 people will flee there. The first 10,000 blacks who come in there will overwhelm the services.
Eight million Cubans are black. Of that two million are what they call pichón, their parents come from the rest of the Caribbean and they’re trying to get out now, to go to Trinidad, Barbados.
NM: Well, Mr Manning has been pushing for Cuba to be one of the main items on the agenda at the Summit of the Americas. I think perhaps he’s aware of what’s happening, as a black man visiting Cuba.
CM: I don’t think he’s aware [he steupses]. He’s pushing the Cuba agenda because all of Caricom-these are client states, nothing but client states.
